Happy End

An absorbing drama that makes quite a powerful statement about the fragmented nature of modern life. It's a sort-of sequel to Haneke's 'Amour', but the tone is so different I didn't register this at first. The director has a tendency to impose ideas upon the naturalistic flow of a story, twisting characters to the point of implausibility. He can be irritatingly oblique, also. Another criticism is that 'Happy End' has an uncertain mood: it utilises the format of a social comedy, but the sense of underlying dread and menace makes it impossible to read as 'black humour'. Well-acted and impeccably filmed, though.

I viewed Haneke's entire filmography back when it was all available to stream on Netflix, and I believe he's the most important filmmaker alive today. Even his movies that are my least favorite (71 Fragments, Time of the Wolf) have scenes that are mesmerizing, moments of resonance that linger with you long after the credits have rolled. Because I can't say the same for Happy End, I worry that this film might be his most unremarkable.

Certainly, like all of Haneke's films, Happy End is beautifully shot, realistically acted, and has enough suspense, tension, and thought-provoking insight to keep the mind active. A scene late in the film between the patriarch (Jean-Louis Trintignant, doing a variation of his role in Amour) and his granddaughter (Fantine Harduin) is a standout; for a moment, it seems as though a heartfelt interrogation between a man at the end of his life and a woman at the beginning of hers might reveal some secret about the ultimate meaning of living, though of course it turns out that neither of them has any idea what it all means. This scene intrigued me, but it still left me disappointed.

Likewise with the climax, which, I think, attempts to pull off something similar to what he accomplished with Funny Games. Funny Games was ultimately a critique of the spectacle of violent entertainment, frequently asking the viewer to pause and ask, "Why the hell did I pay to see this? What enjoyment or edification was I expecting from seeing a family get tortured?" It seems to me that Happy End hints at something comparable at the dinner party towards the end, when the camera moves away from the suffering of these miserable, self-hating, filthy rich, and terribly boring people in order to briefly highlight the lives of refugees who are trying to escape to the economic opportunities of the UK. Here Haneke seems to ask, Why'd you pay to see the haute bourgeoisie simmer over their self-inflicted "problems" when there are real things at stake in the world? All the same, this jab is perhaps too subtle and ultimately stings of the "contempt for the viewer" that so many detractors have always accused Haneke of having but which I've never actually been able to detect. If that's the case, why make this expensive-looking movie at all? Why not make a different film--either one that more consciously highlights the refugee crisis, or one that more scathingly indicts the chamber drama genre?

Haneke trains his incisive gaze on many interesting issues throughout Happy End--psychopathy, greed, social media, suicide, depression, euthanasia, immigration, class conflict, corporate liability--but what he ultimately stirs up is a lot more tired, a lot less insightful, and far more "meh" than anything he's ever produced before.

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

If you'd like to feel good about your family, then see Happy End, written and directed by an Austrian, Michael Haneke, with a dollop of Euro horror that seems to combine elements of Roman Polanski and Mike Nichols. This family flirts with self-destruction across the generations.

Patriarch Georges Laurent (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is celebrating his 85th birthday with enough of his wit left to remember he dispatched his ailing wife to the next life out of concern for her pain. Similarly his granddaughter, 13 year old Eve (Fantine Harduin), attempted to poison a classmate and recently to commit suicide. Across the generations, this is not a happy family. However, a happy end they may have if even-keeled, task-oriented Georges' daughter, Anne (Isabelle Huppert), prevails. Not likely.

For all their wealth, each member, even comely and charming daughter Anne, is unhappy, she with a grown son, Pierre (Franz Rogowski), who is not socially or mentally well balanced. He can't even sing Karaoke without endangering his life. That Karaoke scene is a keeper in modern cinema.

Yet the family does ritual dining and socializing, right down to inviting friends and relatives to an intimate concert that is not euphonious to say the least. Just another off-balance moment. All the pretty dining and servants can't mask the undercurrent of familial larceny.

Haneke's use of modern technology from the live-streaming video during the opening bathroom scene to the exposure of a love affair through instant messaging casts an unflattering, harsh light on whatever the family may want to hide but can't. Even a work accident is seen through a security camera. As in Haneke's Cache, surveillance is revealing but never a solution.

Anne's engagement party could have been the democratizing of this family, but rather becomes a debacle when Pierre brings unannounced African immigrants with the beginnings of a diatribe against immigration policies. The result is mutilation, not reconciliation.

Happy End will not have a happy end for audiences unwilling to do some heavy thinking about the various puzzle pieces from each episode that eventually create a mosaic of modern bourgeois dysfunction. As such, the film may be difficult and tedious for general audiences.

Privilege has inured the principals to the plight of the servants in their household (the dog-bite sequence is particularly unnerving) and the unwanted immigrants at their wedding. This scurrilous neglect, passed down to generations, reflects not just a French problem (they are in Calais, after all, the port for refugee chaos) when the audience may consider the growing class disparities around the world and callous care about the poor and homeless.

Happy End, in the end, is about cankerous abandon in privilege, whose end may be no less than murder and suicide. Whatever, it's not pretty but a rewarding artistic experience.

Greetings again from the darkness. Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke has blessed us with, what I consider, at least five excellent movies (AMOUR, THE WHITE RIBBON, CACHE, FUNNY GAMES, THE PIANO TEACHER), and though it's been 5 years since his last, there is always a welcome anticipation for his next project. Unfortunately, this latest is esoteric and disjointed even beyond his usual style. In fact, at face value, it just seems only to be an accusation lobbed at the wealthy, stating that their privilege and cluelessness brings nothing but misery and difficulty to themselves and the rest of society.

We open on an unknown kid's secretive cell phone video filming of her mother getting ready for bed, followed by the mistreatment of a pet hamster as a lab rat, and finally video of her mother passed out on the sofa - just prior to an ambulance being called. Our attention is then turned to a family estate in Calais, which is inhabited by the octogenarian patriarch Georges (Jean-Louis Trintigant), his doctor son Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz) and daughter Anne (Isabelle Huppert), Anne's malcontent son Pierre (Franz Rogowski), Thomas' wife and infant son, and the Moroccan couple who are household servants. While her mother is being treated for an overdose, 13 year old Eve (Fantine Harduin), moves in to the estate (Thomas is her re-married father). It's here that we learn the opening scenes were Eve's video work ... clearly establishing her as a damaged soul.

Initially, it seems as though we will see the family through Eve's eye, but what follows instead is the peeling back of family layers exposing the darkness and menace that haunts each of these characters. Georges appears to be intent on finding a way out of the life that has imprisoned his body and is now slowly taking his mind through dementia. Thomas is carrying on an illicit affair through raunchy email exchanges. Anne is trying to protect the family construction business from the incompetence of her son Pierre, while also looking for love with solicitor Toby Jones. At times, we are empathetic towards Eve's situation, but as soon as we let down our guard, her true colors emerge. The film is certainly at its best when Ms. Harduin's Eve is front and center. Her scene with her grandfather Georges uncovers their respective motivators, and is chilling and easily the film's finest moment.

The film was a Cannes Palme d'Or nominee, but we sense that was in respect to Mr. Haneke's legacy, and not for this particular film. The disjointed pieces lack the necessary mortar, or even a linking thread necessary for a cohesive tale. What constitutes a happy end ... or is one even possible? Perhaps that's the theme, but the film leaves us with a feeling of incompleteness - or perhaps Haneke just gave up trying to find such an ending, and decided commentary on the "bourgeois bubble" was sufficient.

A bit of a non-event really imo. The cast is excellent but the story is totally unsatisfactory and the end is just a mess.

I see no meaningful nuances or anything to make it remotely exciting but I did enjoy the the cinematography and the locations. In some ways this is a typically French film where nothing really happens but we're all supposed to think we've missed something.

No cigar.